Société Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire
by HoboScience
Summary: SERN does not hire researchers based on their past, but on their future. An insight on the opponents of Valkyrie in the Alpha attractor field.
1. Pinpoint

_Alpha Attractor Field  
__Divergence Number 0.337174  
__AD 2025.02.17 01:12:51:47_

I am actively assisting the greatest evil in human history.

At one point I could have claimed innocence. Later, I could have pleaded ignorance or self-defense. More recently, I could rationalize, compartmentalize to cover my crimes. I can clearly remember the moments when I crossed each of these lines, the exact words which drove me over them. I have no doubt that I would cross them again. Attractor field theory is clear: the fact of my sin is set in stone, and my future is as irrevocable as my past.

In both, I work for SERN.

* * *

_AD 2002.09.12 08:00:21:89_

My first year at SERN was relatively uneventful. It followed a particularly intense summer internship, where my team was unable to complete our project. Our director was so impressed with our ambition that he offered us full-time positions to finish the work, and two days before fall term started I dropped out of graduate school to join the world's foremost particle physics research facility.

When we presented our results, the board gave it no more than a courtesy inspection before promptly firing my teammates. Afterwards, they explained that it had been no more than an extensive interview session, and that only I had what it took to stay on board. They offered me a position in the Higgs research group, on-site housing, and nearly double my previous salary. My near-instant acceptance of every physicist's dream was met with a one-line reply.

_Welcome to the winning team._

* * *

_AD 2007.06.24 22:39:03:65_

The emails started arriving four years later. Someone from the Neutrino lab had recovered copies of an old project, and sent it to the entire staff. I caught the message just as it arrived, and managed to read the subject line - _Z-Program / Jellyman's Reports_ \- before the entire file vanished from my system. In its place was an email I had never seen, five hours old and titled _Routine Server Maintenance._ It was marked as already read.

Subsequent copies of the Jellyman reports were delivered more covertly, through external message clients or directed at specific departments. Each time, the email lasted less than ten seconds before a "maintenance" message from earlier that day replaced it. By the fourth occurrence, I had my email open and visible at all hours; by the sixth, I had the detail I never wanted to see.

_Human is dead. Mismatch._

* * *

_AD 2010.08.17 03:10:40:48_

A year later I was relocated to a group researching micro black holes. SERN had denied their existence less than two months earlier, but with the Jellyman messages still fresh in my mind I kept my mouth shut and my head down. They had stopped after the eighth round, and the Neutrino lab had an opening posted by the next day. For most, it was an opportunity; for me, it was a warning shot. It bought SERN two more years of my perfect obedience.

Then the hostage arrived. Two days prior, they replaced every member of the team but me - in retrospect, I should have taken the hint and fled the country. The morning she was brought in, armed civilians burst into my room and dragged me through the complex. With every one of their steps I feared the end. What I got was worse.

The room I was dumped in was pitch black, save for two searing spotlights: one aimed directly at me, and one at the hostage across the room. An unseen council bemoaned our situation, pointedly referring to _the trouble we caused,_ leaving no doubt that they were aware of my knowledge. They described a document they received some years prior with detailed future staff records, and how the hostage and I were both active for several more years. They explained how _attractor-field convergence_ meant they couldn't kill us now, no matter how desperately they wanted to. So they let us go.

Because if _SERN_ couldn't change the future, we didn't stand a chance.

* * *

_AD 2021.11.30 20:54:51:19_

Over time, we grew accustomed to our place. Never comfortable - every day we were either set up an experiment that aided the enemy, or were forced to watch as our research shredded another innocent life on a molecular level. But we found our ways to cope, to shield ourselves from the psychological torment. Mostly we talked about her friends outside SERN - unlike me, she had been researching time travel before her abduction, and knew the timeline would protect them for a while longer.

They were mounting a resistance, she claimed, for the war no one saw coming. One of them appeared sporadically in what little news we received from the outside; he was using his temporary death immunity to run raids on the lab every couple of months. I think he even met her, once or twice, before realizing convergence kept her in just as it kept him out.

Her other friend was far more noticeable - cracking SERN's servers every other day and corrupting or modifying crucial files. He somehow opened a line of communication with her that SERN couldn't trace - though after a point they simply cut off our internet access entirely. Even now complaints will crop up claiming that wildly inappropriate commentary was inserted into someone's code, and the computer techs will have to hunt every inch of the system for leaks. I'm not entirely convinced it isn't an AI now living in the rafters of our database.

* * *

Abuse from the higher-ups began to ramp up in the late 10's. Some weeks they would force two people through the machine, with the second recoiling in terror once they saw the fate of the first. They would send children through, kids who had volunteered for the chance to "explore the past." We hardly ate, then. She would abruptly fall silent, in the middle of one of her stories, and just stare up at where the sky should be, lost in some painful memory.

Nothing we did would stop the killing. I think she realized it first, or else had known from her life on the outside. Even if we finished the time machine, SERN would just find a way to use it for greater atrocities. The date of her friends' deaths was approaching; I could see in her eyes that she believed SERN was the cause. The pressure of a decade's isolation and our total impotence against SERN finally broke something in her, and I quickly discovered how thoroughly outclassed I was.

Within a week, she presented a short-range time machine to the director. To anyone else, it would look like a miracle, but I saw her in action. Only 18 hours were needed for her to build the machine; the rest she spent agonizing over how to restrain its power, to keep from giving SERN too great an advantage. After the meeting, she didn't speak for a month.

After the meeting, SERN conquered the world.

* * *

_AD 2025.02.17 01:15:32:55_

Two years later, SERN's control included all major news services and most of the net. Our task complete, they were convinced by both future intel and her "remarkable discovery" that I was no longer important to their operation, and relocated me to their newly acquired Japanese campus. As a courtesy, they even provided my date of death: April 12th, 2044. I outlive the meekest of rebels, a coward to the bitter end.

I used to wonder if I could have done something to change the worldline, to beat the attractor field and take back the future. Two days ago, as I worked on a riot weapon for SERN's paramilitary force, they gave me my answer.

_Hououin Kyouma, leader of "Valkyrie," eliminated in Akihabara._

I'm sorry, Kurisu.


	2. Echelon

_Alpha Attractor Field  
__Divergence Number 0.571042  
__AD 2011.01.02 10:36:08:77_

"Sir? I think you ought to see this."

Distant echoes of my voice reverberate through the vast server room. This is ECHELON: located in Nowhere, Utah, it's the largest collection of communication data in the world. Every year it intercepts trillions of web searches, phone calls, and purchase records, and every year SERN sends someone (read: me) to sift through all that data for potential advances in the hundreds of fields we research. It's a week-long investigation of the most mind-numbingly inane database known to man, and in the six years I've run it there has never been so much as a ghost of useful information.

Until today. My supervisor turns a corner in the rows of fog-fringed server towers, brushing aside stray wires and age-old equipment to look my way. "What'd you get, another perpetual motion machine? Wish the lab boys would get it through their heads that no one will figure those out, even if-"

"No, sir. It's a text message about one of our Z-Program techs, sent July last year." I pull up the data in question and start scrolling through. "For some reason it's split into three chunks: 'I think someone,' then 'just stabbed,' and the last one, 'Makise Kurisu.' Thoughts?"

The boss nudges his glasses up and looks through the message himself. "Doesn't seem too bad. It's not a direct threat, they're just reporting an incident. Still, there's something familiar about it…" He straightens up, plucking a phone out of his loose-fitting slacks. "Go ahead and move on, but tie a marker there. I'm going to drop a line to headquarters, see if they know something about it." As he vanishes back into clouds of coolant, I dutifully loop a bright red "REVISIT" tag around the server rack and plug into the next port on the tower.

Twelve minutes later, I'm trudging through a month's worth of some grade-schooler's love life when my boss comes back into view, still holding his phone. His shirt is polka-dotted with sweat, his face near-perfectly camouflaged in pale wisps of server cumulus. "P-Pull the Kurisu text back up," he stutters. I yank the connector cable, banishing thousands of "ILU BB's" back to irrelevance, and link back into the red-tagged column. "Check the m-message receipt."

Pages of data flicker by before I find the text. "From Okabe Rintarou to Hashida Itaru," I read off, "sent July 28th, 2010; received July…23rd…" My words falter; I may not know all of what SERN does, but after years in ECHELON I know enough. "This is it. This is what wins us the future."

For a while, we just exchange wide-eyed stares. Then, with a nudge of his glasses, my supervisor relays the news to HQ. He nods a bit at their response, then pockets his phone. "They want us in Geneva. _Now._"

* * *

_AD 2011.01.03 16:58:48:30_

I'm still shaking when we walk into the conference room, and only a tenth of that is due to jet lag. The sheer mass of political power in this room could overthrow a global superpower -_they _will _overthrow global superpowers_, I remind myself - and here I am, in my 'Intel Inside' polo and cargo pants. My boss at least managed to put on a suit and tie, but they were as damp as his shirt before our flight left the states. We're both completely out of our depth.

As we take our seats, the suit at the head of the table pipes up. "You are, of course, _aware_ of the significance of your discovery, correct?" Our heads bob sharply. They probably expected this much; even SERN communications are regularly captured by ECHELON, so despite our menial positions my boss and I have pretty high clearance. "Then it's time we disclosed some critical information. As always, material discussed here _does not leave this room,_ under the standard termination clause."

He motions to a girl standing near the door; she triggers the lockdown mechanism, and within moments the room is airtight, soundproof, and perfectly dark. A blue light blinks for her attention, and on the third flash she flips on the overhead projector.

A diagram appears on the wall, displaying a series of tubes merging and twisting with each other. To my right, a woman stands and directs a red laser pointer at the screen. "What you see here is an illustration our local temporal landscape," she explains, "otherwise known as the Alpha attractor field. Without interference, time progresses along a single path; optimally, this path would be the zero worldline." The dot pinpoints the rightmost pipe, marked _0.000000%_.

She highlights the horizontal lines linking some of the tubes. "Modifications to past events cause our observed path through time to shift; through a mechanism established on the zero line, we have a rough idea when these adjustments take place. Branches in the lines shown represent known connections between worldlines, as relayed to us from the zero line. _Slide!_"

The image zooms in on a line marked _0.571042%_, revealing a number of branches; one last summer, headed left, and several more in the coming years. "This line represents our current universe. The branch last summer is one of a select few that exit the Alpha attractor field - and by extension, our sphere of influence." My boss and I nod along; everything so far is old news. "_Slide!_"

A new picture appears: a group of college students hands raised in surrender. "These are the members of the Future Gadget Lab, a terrorist organization we subdued shortly after the branch. They are the original inventors of the time machine." My boss gasps slightly; I reel at the thought. Someone outside SERN had built a time machine? "Up until yesterday, we knew only _when_ we arrived in this worldline, lacking details on _how_. The text message uncovered at ECHELON gives us our answer. _Slide!_"

Three messages, white on black background. "Council members, this is what brought us here. _I think someone just stabbed Makise Kurisu,_ separated unnecessarily into three parts. This provides us with a crucial insight into the failure of the Z-Program - our payload was not too small to change the past, but too _large_. With this detail, we can regain support of the Committee." Finished, the woman bows gently, then takes her seat amidst the growing commotion.

_The Committee_. ECHELON is their technology, and SERN is only one of many puppet organizations vying for their attention. Their communications are automatically excluded from my purview - all I know about them rumors and hearsay from various subgroups. If SERN catches their attention…well, it could only be good for me and my supervisor. I give him a quick glance; from the way his forehead has finally dried off, it's clear he has the same idea.

After a few seconds, the man at the head calls for quiet. "As you might imagine, the ramifications of this are extensive. Now that its viability has been confirmed, all organization resources will be reallocated to the time machine project." He turns my direction, looking straight at me and boss. "In addition, further monitoring of ECHELON will be on a continuous basis, and any communications related to this 'Future Gadget Lab' will be forwarded directly to the Council. Am I understood?"

There's an awkward silence before we manage a "yessir." Unfazed, the suit presses on: "Further concerns about the message are unrelated to your duties; your vigil over ECHELON will begin tomorrow, with appropriate pay increase and accommodations." The girl running the lights takes this as her cue, switching off the projector and depressurizing the room. She opens the door and gestures for us to make our way out.

As I follow my boss out, the girl pats us down for notes. Finding nothing, she offers a "Best of luck in your future endeavors," and shuts the door tight behind us.

* * *

_AD 2011.01.04 08:00:01:13_

I clock in perfectly on time the next day. Last night (Utah time, not Geneva) SERN had given us a pretty nice hotel stay before shipping us back on a company jet. Even my supervisor - who complained the whole way back about not getting a wink of sleep - seems thoroughly alert when he walks in a few minutes later. We walk back through the vast, untamed jungle of servers together, sipping on espresso and marveling at our good fortune as we hunt for our stopping place.

It takes us half an hour. On a normal day, this would be cause for endless empty threats and profanity-laced bickering. Today, however, we are the kings of our domain - we strutted through the swamp of servers like it was paradise. My boss spots it first and calls me over; I almost ignore him just to bask in the euphoria a while longer. Even in this endless dungeon, it feels good to be alive, and only a little of that is the coolant vapor talking.

I catch up to him and clip off the tag - he pockets it, says he wants it as a memento. As he heads back out to the central station, I take one last moment to take in our incredible luck. _SERN didn't kill us. We're saving the future. Everything worked out okay._ I take a seat, plug my monitor back into a trashy grade-school rom-com and plop it onto my lap.

Something jabs me in the thigh. Stifling a cry, I search my pocket for the offending item - a thin, jagged metal card, with something engraved in it. Holding it in the flickering glow of my monitor, I can just make out the inscription - a single line of cryptic text. I read it several times before cautiously re-pocketing the card, still mulling over the words when I return to work.

_Would you trust the future to the one who controls your past? -OV_

* * *

***** Author's Note *****

Hey readers! Hobo here. Obligatory disclaimer: Steins;Gate is the property of MAGES and Nitroplus - I own none of it. That said, the world that they've made is spectacularly interesting, so while they work on _Steins;Gate Zero_ (a sequel series, set in the Beta worldline - check it out!), I've decided to try filling in the gaps. I'll be updating this story whenever an idea strikes me, so check back now and then if you enjoyed this one. Thanks for reading!


	3. Deixis

_Deixis_, n. The use of words whose meaning depends on when, where, and by whom they are being used; e.g., _here, tomorrow, myself._ Greatly complicated by nonlinear time.

* * *

_Null Attractor Field_

_Divergence Number 0.000000_

_AD 2033.07.12 09:04:28:19_

I arrive at the board meeting three years too early.

Not by any fault of my own, of course. Ever since the lab techs finished reverse-engineering that blasted microwave, _someone_ in our group has been sending event notifications well in advance of their actual announcement. Worse yet, the moron thinks he's some sort of comedian - every time, it's an exact copy of the actual notices we use, sent to the same date in a different year. The poor sap who gets it only sees the subject line, _Meeting 07.12 at 09:00_, and has to sprint down the corridors hoping to God they're not too late.

And that's how, in the middle of the most delicate experiment of my career, I got tricked into pulling the plug and racing here. Invited to meet with the future potentate, _the Committee itself_, by some idiot chuckling over spilt tea and shuffled documents. A messenger passing by my imaginary meeting gives me a pitying glance as I boggle at my phone. The screen reads _Sent: 2036.07.12,_ taunting me as it fades to black. I jam it back into my coat and start the long trek back to my office.

* * *

_AD 2033.07.12 09:19:41:05_

After fifteen minutes of scooping up scattered printouts and pamphlets, I finally make it back. My experiment is scrap now - two weeks of prep straight down the drain, without a single data point to show for it. 31 messages wait for my attention, no doubt my researchers clamoring over my sudden absence. I tap _play_ on the outdated receiver as I begin reorganizing my workspace.

"Hey, Doc, I know you got big world-domination stuff to do, but _what the hell was that?_ We can't just reboot the systems, you know! It'll be three days just to recalibrate, and then-" I hit the _next_ button with a sheaf of safety regulations, making a mental note to fire the sender. "That shutdown's got a lot of people awful confused, sir. I'm sure you got a good reason behind it, but whenever you get done with whatever's tyin' you up, could you come down an' explain that to the rest of the crew?" Yes, yes. Very important, that interruption. _Next._

The messages prattle on as I slowly bring my desk back into a semblance of order. I'm in the middle of sorting a series of AMADEUS articles when one of the recordings catches my ear. "-malous results, consistent with-" I flick the receiver back to the start of the message and press _play._

"Associate Rice reporting. Doctor Mikhail, there's a bit of a situation down here - we couldn't disengage systems three and four before the shutdown went through. Everything's still intact, but data logs from the outage are showing anomalous results, consistent with uninhibited neural resonance. Please advise. Rice out."

As I take in this development, my eyes fall to the pages in my hands. AMADEUS. A Committee-backed study into brain simulation, its results formed the basis for my research: transmission of neural data across time. All but the most trivial of physical data can corrupt the timeline - the future memos come dangerously close - but by transmitting consciousness, we could bypass that possibility. If Rice is right, today's shutdown successfully accomplished that feat - and history is finally within our grasp.

* * *

_AD 2033.07.12 12:32:59:82_

"It's exactly like I told you, sir. Right here is where they cut the power, and this spike matches our resonance models almost perfectly." Rice has spools of paper strewn about, like a seismograph loose in an earthquake. He's showing me the end of the strip, where the red indicator line wavers violently. "Of course, we'd want to damp the field somewhat if we actually used the system - I'd hate to have been the guy on the receiving end of this."

I shuffle through the heaps of output and pick up an earlier segment of data, where the red marks barely leave the central zero mark. "The real question here," I say, "is why the resonance only picked up once your team turned the power _off_." Rice brings his section over for comparison, lining it up with mine. My narrow wobble is within error margins of zero, nothing compared to his vicious jags of ink. Still, there's a similarity I can almost-

Rice interrupts my train of thought. "Maybe it didn't - see how the ridges in the "on" phase nearly match the resonant curve? I'd say-"

"It's _my _research, Rice. I'll be the one to decide what the results mean." He backs off, looking equal parts insulted and ashamed. Rice is right, though - I wouldn't have called it from the powered-on segment alone, but when compared to the unpowered results, it makes a compelling statement. "The parallels between these results suggest neural resonance throughout the experiment; power didn't disable the effect, it merely damped it. Tell your techs they have two weeks to get the systems ready for a variable-wattage trial; in the meantime, I want you to figure out who and when the brain we're resonating with is."

Enthusiasm replaces exasperation on Rice's face. "You got it, Doc. We'll have it up and running in ten days." He starts re-spooling the output sheets as I forge a path through them, leaving him to his work.

* * *

_AD 2033.07.20 18:21:35:67_

Reams of technical documents encircle my desk, forming a shrine to time-travel research in my otherwise barren workspace. Since the future memo incident I've spent my days (and occasionally nights) poring over every thesis SERN has published on the subject; unfortunately, all they amount to are theories. Only the smallest of past-modifications have been accepted by the Council, for fear of upending our seat of power. Of those, only two or three produced confirmed results - none of which gave a strong indication of the nature of time travel.

A rap on my door distracts me from the pillars of academia. "Note from downstairs for you, Doctor."

I wrench myself from the documents to see a woman just outside, waving a sealed envelope in my face. The front reads _Dr. M.E. - URGENT_. Plucking it from her grasp, I begin to check the edges for tears or creasing. "This envelope has not left your sight since you received it," I ask, noting some minor nicks in the corner, "and no one, yourself included, has tampered with or attempted to open it in any way?" She bobs her head. "Good. Off you go, then." She saunters away, her contract fulfilled.

I shut the door tight behind her, shaking slightly. If the message in my hands was merely confidential, its sender would have called my office; whatever this contains, it's not something either of us can afford to have on record. I have a brief struggle with the seal, then slide the note out and begin to read.

_Sir, I finished analysis of the neural resonance data. It's a 98% match for one of the Valkyrie terrorists, scanned January of 2025. Records I found on him date back to 2011, starting with a message intercepted by ECHELON - the earliest mention of Valkyrie _anywhere_._

_It's their _leader, _sir. Out of 7 billion possible targets, we contacted _Kyouma himself. _Please advise. - R._

* * *

_AD 2033.07.20 18:30:11:24_

For the second time in just over a week, I'm sprinting down SERN's sterile corridors, loose papers scattering from the stack in my arms. Moments ago, I had scrubbed Rice's note clean of ink, flushed the words, and incinerated the page. Stories circulate regularly about SERN's ability to recover destroyed information; I have no intention of becoming one of them.

I arrive at Rice's workshop panting heavily. His door is marked off with caution tape and no less than twenty "Experiment in progress, DO NOT DISTURB" signs. I raise my fist to knock anyway, but before I can the door opens and Rice yanks me through.

The room is even worse than it was during my last visit. In addition to the looping piles of equipment output, stacks of incident reports tower over me in every direction. Rice seems to have deteriorated as well; the youthful smirk I left this project to is gone, replaced with solemn anxiety. He motions for me to keep quiet and leads me through the gauntlet to a secluded corner, entirely enclosed by paperwork.

"How can I help you, sir?" Rice's cheery tone startles me at first, but instinct quickly kicks in. This isn't my first covert conversation; I know how easily ECHELON can pick up a voice, even at SERN.

"What do you think I'm here for? The systems were supposed to be ready two days ago!" My voice covers the _shoof_ as I pull a page from one of the sturdier stacks. "How is anything supposed to get done around here if you lab boys never meet deadlines?" I scratch out a note: _sure it's HIM?_

Rice nods. "Whoa there, Doc. You said we had two weeks, I promised ten days. Neither of those are up yet." His penmanship is terrible. _ran proj'n - 100% match for dec 29 1999._ "We're right on schedule. Don't go pulling our plug again." _can't switch tgt w/o addtl contact._

"I know what I said, _Associate_ Rice." _what'd we send?_ "One week, to the hour. I won't tolerate you putting words into my mouth." _did he notice? _

He hesitates, then scrawls _echo only. no data._ "My apologies, sir, I had forgotten my place. I'm afraid I told the workers ten days - I can rush them, but the best we can hope for is tomorrow." _def. felt it, high res'nce =_ _v painful._

My sigh carries a mixture of emotions. Relief, that we didn't provide intel to SERN's greatest enemy, but also confusion. If we injured the leader of Valkyrie at the turn of the century, we should have observed a major upheaval in the timeline. Maybe it was a causal loop - the damage to his mind could have already been present, and we just created its origin? I realize Rice is staring at me, waiting for a response. My questions would be answered soon enough.

"It seems I have no choice. Let this be a reminder, however; time in my lab is a valuable resource, and your presence is a privilege, not a necessity." _can fix. good work._ I show him the line before pocketing the note for disposal. I could handle my peers knowing about the rest of this visit. "Now, about the resonance levels last week…"

Rice gets the hint, and steps out of his cavernous archive. "Like I said last week - the guy on the receiving end probably got one hell of a headache. Going forward, we should be able to adjust the power ratio to where we still get an effect, but it doesn't knock the poor fool out for a week." He flips through the folder on his desk, displaying a series of brainwave readouts. "After we get the field strength balanced, we can start acquiring new targets-"

"-and finally give those time-travel nuts some real data." I finish for him. At long last my research would finally reach fruition, putting my peers in their place and lifting SERN to its rightful place at the reins of history.

My machine is the gateway to this future, and I, Doctor Mikhail Edelstein, will see it completed no matter the cost.

***** Author's Note *****

Hey again! As always, credit where it's due: Steins;Gate is the property of MAGES and Nitroplus, and I don't own a speck of it. In addition, the concept for Dr. Mikhail's device came from a reddit thread, where someone suggested that Reading Steiner was the result of an experimental Future Gadget. Thanks, stranger!

I've got a pretty serious aversion to naming OC's, as they never quite mesh with the canon characters. This story breaks with that unspoken rule, partly for readability, but also because I have a few more stories planned for _Divergence Number 0.000000 _\- events there are pretty integral to Alpha Attractor Field. The ECHELON duo should make a reappearance as well; when they do, I'll update the previous chapter with their names.

Thanks for reading! If you've got a moment, drop me a review - comments and critiques are always welcome.


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